Another Layer Of Trump’s ‘Campaign of Retribution’
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has launched a sweeping new anti-fraud program that he plans to ask his state’s legislature to pass just one day after Vice President JD Vance announced the Trump administration will freeze $259 million in Medicaid funding for Minnesota. At a news conference announcing the package, which he claimed the Trump administration was aware of, he called Vance’s actions “totally illegal and unprecedented” and another part of Trump’s campaign of “retaliation” against Minnesotans.
The Trump administration has been hinting at the idea of delivering such a drastic blow to blue states for some time. Trump announced earlier this year that he would withhold some $10 billion in federal funding, approved by Congress, for child welfare programs in Minnesota and four other blue states. Trump hinted at more retaliation against blue states under the guise of amorphous anti-fraud claims during his State of the Union address Tuesday.
“We have decided to temporarily suspend certain amounts of Medicaid funding that go to the State of Minnesota in order to ensure that the State of Minnesota takes seriously its obligation to be a good steward of the American people’s tax dollars,” Vance said Wednesday, flanked by Dr. Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Vance also claimed during the press conference that other blue states would soon be drawn into the so-called “war on fraud” announced by Trump on Tuesday.
Much of Trump’s second-term agenda—theatrical crackdown on Medicaid fraud, massive and violent deportation operations, efforts to access the nation’s voter rolls—is an attempt to lend an air of legitimacy to his broader goal: punishing elected officials and Americans who did not vote for him. Walz denounced him directly on social media immediately after Vance’s announcement Wednesday.
This is a campaign of retaliation. Trump is using the entire federal government as a weapon to punish blue states like Minnesota.
These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young children, people with disabilities, and workers across our state.
– Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) February 25, 2026
He expanded on that notion when he announced the new anti-fraud program on Thursday, arguing that the Trump administration was simply looking for ways to legitimize its targeting of Minnesota — both in terms of its deadly immigration crackdown in the state and withholding crucial federal resources from Minnesota’s low-income and most vulnerable residents.
“No state has experienced this before. What does taking and punishing children and the elderly have to do with fighting fraud when that’s not where this problem is?” Walz said. “It doesn’t matter, and they haven’t given us any way to try to show that everything they asked us to do, we’ve already done. They don’t even pay attention to it.”
Walz acknowledged that there are legitimate causes of fraud problems, as evidenced by the years-long legitimate investigations into social services fraud that he has encouraged to take place in the state. But the administration has now twice used false claims of widespread fraud in the state as a pretext to flood Minneapolis with ICE agents and, now, to cut funding.
“If you really want to fight fraud, you can help us work on this package, get it passed,” Walz said.
—Nicole LaFond
Some state Democrats want to make it harder for ICE agents to get jobs after Trump
Democratic lawmakers in at least four states recently introduced bills that would bar people who worked as Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees during Trump’s second term from getting jobs in their states’ civil service, in fields such as law enforcement and public education. The bills are all proposals and are expected to face some legal challenges if signed into law, but, as The Guardian reports, most Democrats in the states that introduced the legislation are confident the laws will prevail in court if passed. States include New Jersey, Maryland, California and Washington.
“If you are an ICE agent, you commit to engaging in illegal conduct. You commit to engaging in racial profiling of Latino communities. You commit to engaging in unlawful detentions and deportations of people who have legal rights in this country, you commit to the separation of families and children,” New Jersey Rep. Ravi Bhalla told the Guardian.
—Nicole LaFond
Mamdani secures release of Columbia student detained by DHS
More from New York Magazine here.
Trump’s conspiracy theorist friends want him to declare a state of emergency to take over the election
MAGA allies are circulating a draft executive order that they say would give President Trump power over voting and elections, according to a new Washington Post report — and they are coordinating, they say, with the Trump administration.
The 17-page draft would rely on Trump allies’ oft-debunked claim that China interfered in the 2020 election. They hope to use that conspiracy theory as the basis for declaring a national emergency, which they say will give Trump new authority over elections, including the power to issue a nationwide ban on things like states accepting mail-in ballots and the use of electronic voting machines.
“Under the Constitution, it’s legislatures and states that actually control how a state conducts its elections, and the president has no power to do that,” Trump lawyer and ally Peter Ticktin — a longtime Trump friend who was involved in some of Trump’s failed lawsuits against Democrats in the 2016 Russia investigation — told the Washington Post.
“But we have a situation here where the president is aware that there are foreign interests interfering in our electoral processes,” he told the Post. “This causes a national emergency that the president must be able to address.”
“What a gift such a clearly unconstitutional decree would be! ” David Becker, former DOJ attorney and executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, wrote in an article on Bluesky. “While divorced from legal and factual reality, this would allow the courts to invalidate this power grab well before the election and uphold clear limits on federal interference in elections.”
Democrats are already gearing up to fight the various ways Trump will interfere in the midterm elections — and this likely won’t be an exception.
—Khaya Himmelman
In case you missed it
New edition of The Franchise of Khaya Himmelman: The Franchise: Trump’s State of the Union Laden with (Electoral) Lies
Morning memo: Showdown against acting U.S. attorneys brews in Seattle
VIDEO: David Kurtz reports on Abrego Garcia’s vindictive prosecution hearing
ICYMI: Johnson says he will let Gonzales allegations ‘play out’
Yesterday’s most read story
Five takeaways from Trump’s plodding, scattered and sometimes worrisome state of the Union
What we read
Americans are leaving the United States in record numbers
The first couple of a dysfunctional EDS
DHS admits to deporting more than 80 DACA recipients
